Let’s Begin with the Letter People®: What Works Clearinghouse

EffectivenessLet’s Begin with the Letter People® was found to have no discernible effects on oral language and phonological processing and mixed effects on print knowledge for preschool children.

Program DescriptionLet’s Begin with the Letter People® is an early childhood literacy curriculum that uses 26 thematic units—each of which covers a letter of the alphabet—to develop children’s language and early literacy skills. A major focus of the program is phonological awareness, including rhyming, word play, alliteration, and segmentation. Children are encouraged to learn as individuals, in small groups, and in a whole-class environment. Teacher resource books and a set of classroom books and other program materials are available as a program kit.

ResearchThe What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) identified three studies of Let’s Begin with the Letter People® that fall within the scope of the Early Childhood Education topic area and meet WWC evidence standards. Three studies meet WWC evidence standards with reservations, and together, they included 885 preschool children ages three to five in 24 preschools in the greater Houston, Texas area and southeastern New York state.

The WWC considers the extent of evidence for Let’s Begin with the Letter People® on the school readiness of preschool children to be medium to large for two outcome domains—oral language and print knowledge—and small for one domain—phonological processing. There were no studies that meet standards in three other domains, so we do not report on the effectiveness of Let’s Begin with the Letter People® for those domains in this intervention report.